Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a
purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let
him sell his garment, and buy one. – Luke 22:36 (KJV)
Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a
purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let
him sell his garment, and buy one. – Luke 22:36 (KJV)
Why Christians Don’t (and Won’t) Support Gun Control
Christians
have a theological view of the world that is given us by the Holy Scriptures.
Our epistemology, that is what we believe is true and why, is
predicated upon our conviction that the 66 books known as the ‘Holy Bible’ is
inspired, inerrant, sufficient, and true. In the overarching worldview through
which we see history, current events, and the world at large, Christians have
room to accommodate the notion of evil. In fact, a primary doctrine of
Christian theology for thousands of years has been the core belief that man is
essentially bad. Mankind is a race of fallen creatures, suffering from the
disease of wickedness which we have inherited from Adam. This negative
anthropology is as much the heart of our religion as the solution to such a
problem, who is Jesus. If we weren’t inherently bad, we wouldn’t need a Savior
who is inherently good, who could reach into time and space and give us new natures
that aren’t depraved.
Paul
wrote it best in Romans 3, in which he painted an abysmal picture of the heart
of man:
None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave;they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.
This view
of mankind as essentially evil is in stark contrast to the collective wisdom of
our modern age, which holds to John Locke’s tabula rasa theorem that man is
born with a blank slate. Locke’s hypothesis was a departure from classical
Christian thought that man is born evil. It is peculiar, then, that the
American Founding Fathers considered so heavily the work of Locke when
designing our system of governance, which is contrastingly formed upon the
Christian notion that people are naturally evil.
The
Federalist Papers 51 addressed the topic of human depravity in relation to
government head-on, and the famous quotation is most often attributed to James
Madison:
The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Human
nature, according to the Federalists, was inherently wicked. Because mankind
does not consist of angels, it must have government. Because government is
comprised of men, government must be limited, because even the governors are
wicked. Therefore, the Founders saw fit to install a form of government in
which the wickedness of man is checked and balanced at all levels, both for the
governed and for the governors.
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Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a
purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let
him sell his garment, and buy one. – Luke 22:36 (KJV)
[PHOTO SOURCE: https://au.pinterest.com/123rkay/verses-bible-snap-and-quotes/]
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However,
21st Century American society has largely abandoned the negative Christian
anthropology and adopted an indomitably positive anthropology that believes men
– in general – are innately good. So then, when tragedies happen like what
occurred this week at a Parkland, Florida public school, Christians and
secularists have startlingly different perspectives on the problem and thus,
the solution. Secularists have no theological framework to accommodate for the
notion of evil. Postmodern in philosophy, secularists don’t believe in an
absolute truth, and without absolute truth, there’s no such thing as immutable
morality. With postmodern philosophy, what is “right” and “wrong” becomes
little more than subjective opinion. Likewise, secularists have no theological
framework to accommodate for evil because they are evolutionist in their
biology. If there is no God, there is no Law Giver, and if there is no Law
Giver, there is no law. And if there is no Law, there is no “evil,” in any real
or meaningful sense. Therefore, both philosophically and biologically, secularists
have to find different reasons for mass murder besides sheer wickedness.
Christians, much more easily, call such behavior “wickedness, sin, depravity,
or evil.”
For
secularists, there must be some reason why this gunman murdered 17 innocent
people other than that he is evil. Facts that have surfaced which lead one to
believe the shooter was paranormally influenced by Satan, such as the Daily Mail reporting he heard the voices of demons or
that he cut himself and banged his head against the wall, are dismissed by
secularists as nothing but mental illness. Testimonies from classmates that he
was “dark,” “evil,” or “demonic” are quickly overlooked as synonyms for
“crazy.” And while the use of prescribed psychotropic drugs is a clear common
denominator among almost all mass shooters – including this one – our secular
society assumes that such prescriptions are the source of the problem and not a
mere symptom of it.
For other
secularists, the problem isn’t only mental illness but it is a
crime-investigation system that is dysfunctional. The FBI was warned that he
publicly stated on YouTube that he was going to be a school shooter, and they
didn’t forward the concern on to the local field office that could investigate
further. His Instagram account was a vocal cry for help. He conducted training
exercises with a supposed White Nationalist group. He bragged about hurting animals.
He had taken ammunition and other contraband to school. He wasn’t even allowed
to school with a backpack because of the obviousness of his threats. He was
abusive to his girlfriend. He was expelled for fighting. He was a “Peeping
Tom,” a stalker, and stopped his mental health treatment. He has a sibling who
has suffered from mental illness. If someone could compile a list of warning
signs, the gunman’s page would set a record for “should have seen this coming.”
In fact, his classmates are on record as vocally supposing it was him even
during the shooting. For anyone paying attention to the failure of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, they might include “law enforcement
incompetency” as another reason why this tragedy occurred.
For even
more secularists, the problem is the easy access to firearms. Like so many
other mass shooters, this gunman chose as his weapon the most widely-owned
rifle in America, the AR-15. It is a black, scary, and ominous looking rifle.
For many, it doesn’t matter that this rifle has the same functionality as any
semi-automatic rifle that is commonplace in more than forty million homes. It
doesn’t matter, to many, that this carbine has no better functionality to kill
than most hunting rifles. To those secularists, the problem isn’t that the
gunman was evil; it’s that the gun itself was evil. Oddly enough, even a
secular society can see evil within inanimate objects, even though they aren’t
capable of seeing evil within the hearts of men. This is because for
secularists, there really is no “heart” at all in an evolutionary view of
humanity; there is only the brain, and that brain isn’t evil (because evil
requires a good, and good is subjective), but it must be mentally ill. So then,
Parkland Florida students and certain members of the community are shouting “shame on you” to legislators for not doing
more to curb Second Amendment freedoms because to them, it’s the guns that are
the problem.
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The Crusader Rifle with
Bible Verse.
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However,
for Christians, we recognize that sometimes the problems in someone’s head are
nothing but an extension of the problems in someone’s heart. We recognize that
some people are wicked, and they don’t shoot up innocent people because they’re
driven to by madness, but by sheer hatred. More often than not, these mass
murderers commit their crimes with cold calculation and forethought in a way
that a truly mentally ill person is incapable. Their minds are functioning at
high capacity; it is their soul that is ill.
Likewise,
Christians recognize that if one evil man is a danger, then a hundred wicked
men are even worse. We recognize that a society without a means to protect
itself from a government that is more wicked than this mass murderer, it will
lead to only more carnage but on a much more massive scale. We recognize that
the words of Madison are still true, that it’s because of the evil of human
nature that the Citizenry must always be prepared to curtail the power of a
government that is comprised of men, who from time to time are capable of
extreme wickedness. We, as Christians, are not blind to world history, in which
an unarmed Citizenry has been murdered far more efficiently and methodically
than this gunman could ever have imagined. This man’s offense pales in
comparison to that of Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Pasha,
Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Yahya Kahn and those mass murders conducted by
countless warlords and despots even today, in smaller numbers and more easily
overlooked because of their unfortunate impertinence to American life, but far
more orderly and successful than any school shooting in the United States. We
believe that evil on a small scale should not overshadow the possibility of
evil on a large scale, perhaps even conducted by a legally constituted
government.
It is the
negative Christian anthropology that allows us to blame certain actions upon
the not-overly-simplistic reality of evil that makes us unwilling to give up
our only earthly defense against it, which is the use of force. Because we
recognize that there will always be wolves, we refuse to turn ourselves into
unarmed sheep. For the secularist who believes ultimately that the government
is the closest thing to God in the world, they hold out optimistic hope that
with enough laws and government control, tragedies will not occur. In doing so,
they tragically overlook the reality that more times than not, the government
itself can be a far greater evil. We Christians believe that evil will be in
this world until Jesus comes in his fullness, and until then, we have to be
realists and prepare ourselves to confront it.
From a
Christian worldview, the ownership of weapons is a necessary protection against
evil. While it is true that Jesus told Peter to put away His sword because
he must be crucified for the sins of the world (Matthew 26:52),
he told them that very night to buy a sword in advance of their coming
persecution (Luke
22:36). While Jesus’ exhortation that we turn the cheek from insult (Matthew 5:39)
has been taken by pacifists (defined by JD’s dictionary as “those who let
others die for their lives and liberties”) to be the locus classicus text for
passive non-resistance, a robust theology of persecution reveals that the
thrice-holy God has indeed called his people to self-defense, protection of the
innocent through violent means, and promotion of the general welfare through
war. There is no logical reason to believe that God’s call to arms throughout
Scripture has been abrogated in this current dispensation, for God does not
change (Malachi
3:6) and his Word is immutable (Hebrews 6:17).
Furthermore, the call to martyrdom that we see repeated throughout the New
Testament does not imply that our death for the sake of the cross be a peaceful
surrendering of ourselves over to injustice or voluntary death.
A
thorough analysis of God’s divine hand guiding the body-politic of ancient
Israel reveals an understood right of self-defense. We are to deliver the
innocent from those that seek them harm (Proverbs 8:4).
While murder is clearly prohibited (Leviticus
24:16-17), the taking of a murderer’s life is not prohibited and neither is
it murder (Genesis
9:6). The qualifying distinctions between killing and murder are found in
places like Exodus 21, Numbers 35, and Deuteronomy 19. In the commonwealth laws
of Israel, delivered by God, one had the right to take the life of one breaking
into their home in the night (Exodus 22:2). The general equity of this Old Testament law
(to use words from the London Baptist and Westminister Confession) – that is,
what is moral, universal and perpetual in nature – is that it is morally
acceptable to take the life of one who will harm the innocent.
Even
though our enemies are not flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12),
the same is true for the Israelites as they were rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls,
when they were instructed to arm themselves for potential conflict (Nehemiah 4:17).
The realization of spiritual enemies did not negate the reality that there might
be some people in need of a good killing, and God’s people were to be prepared
to fight back. When Haman’s plans went awry because of Esther’s obedience,
God’s people were instructed to kill those who sought their lives (Esther 9:2-5).
When Abraham’s family was in jeopardy, he raised an army and killed their
captors (Genesis
14:14-18) and was later blessed by God for that action.
David’s
hands were taught to operate a lethal weapon by God (Psalm 18:24).
And while we do not trust in our weapons, but in God (Psalm 44:7),
this presupposes the ownership of weapons. On any given day, I may carry a
number of different lethal weapons, but my trust is in God that they will fire
properly, hit their target, or in God’s kind providence, I’ll find their use
unnecessary.
Although
we are, indeed, sheep sent out to wolves, the Good Shepherd never intended and
neither does he ask us to provide a pacifistic buffet of mutton for any wolf
that would seek to devour us.
So then,
it is because of these deep-seeded differences in theological worldviews that
we Christians refuse to be disarmed. We recognize that evil people will always
do evil things and that they will find ways (guns or not) to accomplish such
things. So then, recognizing the reality of evil, we’ve chosen the best course
of action to repel that evil in the temporal realm; chiefly, this means having
the right to keep and bear arms, a right our Constitution says, “Shall not be
infringed.”
[Contributed
by JD Hall]
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